Most individuals have several telephony devices (also referred to herein as “telephones”, or “telecommunications devices”) available to them to make and receive calls. Mobile telephones, such as cellular telephones, have become ubiquitous as users enjoy the convenience and portability they provide. In the home or office environment, users still typically maintain their traditional home desktop landline or office landline telephone using the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN). More recently, users have started to utilize Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephones. The VoIP telephone may be a personal computer (PC) executing a VoIP application such as Skype that provides telephone communications service over the Internet.
VoIP telephones are popular with users as they provide telephony services for free or at reduced costs, including calls to international destinations. Furthermore, when implemented on a PC in the office, they typically are plugged into an A/C power source, thereby providing unlimited talk time. However, it is not uncommon for a user conducting a call with a VoIP telephone to need to leave the office and vicinity of the PC before completing the call. In such a situation, the user typically wishes to continue the call using his mobile phone.
In the prior art, the user typically terminates the call on the VoIP telephone and then either dials the other call participant using the mobile phone or has the call participant dial the user on his mobile phone. As a result, there is an interruption in the conversation between the user and the call participant while the call is being dialed on the mobile phone and the call is being connected. Furthermore, either the user or the call participant must manually locate or dial the user's mobile phone number. In a scenario where the user is participating in a conference call, the delay in redialing into the conference call is particularly problematic as everyone on the conference call must pause while the user redials and reconnects the call. Alternatively, the user misses part of the conversation if the conference call participants do not pause while the user re-connects to the conference call.
As a result, there is a need for improved methods and systems for enabling transitioning of calls between telephony devices.